| TARGET PRACTICE
by April Salzano We had been in your bed for hours after you asked me where I saw myself in a few years. Time slipped by, yellowed at the edges like dead bugs on your window sill before I answered. What followed: questions, answers, clarifications, all necessary evils in the dark. Yours was a drunken coma by the time I finished beating dead horses to death. You lay drained from gnawing your own leg off and dreamed I shot you between the eyes that night. I turned linguistic corners in the dark, bumping into my own walls, arguing with myself, my ghosts, my demons. None of them you. I guess I must have slept. Ask me again where I see myself, let's talk of our future. This is what I do not envision: you pacing in front of my window, head turning at every sign of life outside. There the blinds are closed at dusk and the traffic never quiets. I do not see you suffocating in someone else's house, repairing my broken fence, replacing my light bulbs and hot water heater, changing hair-filled furnace filters. Nor do I see you holding tight to me each night, embracing the vague concepts forever or always. I can't see past this room, or the grey hour of tomorrow morning when we will make our love as the wind throws beer bottles and spent brass from your front porch, left from hours of target practice the day before, our shots distant and expected punctuation to the next nearest neighbor, who is miles away. The sun will shine on your bed like a spotlight before you can say, there isn’t that better? And I will nod my head no, and begin to reload. I can't see past the length of my arms, holding holding you in place like a paper bulls-eye, past where I end and you begin. |
Portrait by Francis Raven |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
home | Table of Contents | archive